~ Combing Life with Books

THERE IS NO LIGHT IN DARKNESS by Claire Contreras

Book Description

Publication Date: January 9, 2013

*This is book 1 of a two book series. The second book, Darkness Before Dawn, is available now.

Note: This is a romance novel.

Blake Brennan had a difficult introduction to life. She lives in a constant state of paranoia, believing that she is the reason those around her get hurt. Her feelings are tested when her past comes back to haunt her and she must choose whether she wants to continue to live in fear or let her heart love freely.

This is part one of a series and contains sexual content and explicit language.

I read a lot of books but rarely do I find a book that has me rushing through daily chores and praying for late appointments just so I can get just a few extra minutes with a book and this was one story that caused me to think non-stop about getting back to Blake and Cole. There is heart breaking aspects to this that will make you reach for tissues, there are intense passion scenes that will make you need a cold shower and there are mysteries that will make you willing to skip the shower and tissues just to keep reading so you can find the missing pieces to this story. I found by half way through the book I wanted the answers more for the characters than for my own piece of mind.

All of the characters are well-developed and you will find something in each one that will draw you into the story but Cole will make you fall in love. He is so devoted and in love with Blake, but he is also human and makes many mistakes in his efforts to win her trust. I found myself wanting to smack Cole and tell him to stop being stupid but Blake is stubborn and scared. She has lost everyone she has loved and is afraid to say the word to anyone, but she does LOVE Cole. With her I wanted to shake her and tell her how lucky she was to have Cole chasing after her. I found myself saying out loud while reading the book “just tell him you love him, take the chance”. Who doesn’t fall in love with a guy who is willing to sleep on the floor by your bed because he wants to be near you and you refuse to let him sleep in bed with you. She makes sure there are plenty of walls that he will have to climb over to get to her and he is not only willing to climb the wall, he is ready to bull doze those walls down. Both need the missing pieces to their childhood and what caused them to each be taken from their families and placed with strangers, yet they show such strength and courage to make those new homes become a real part of who they are now and keep looking towards building a future not looking only at the past. On paper they are both victims, but while reading their story, victim is NOT a label I could put on either of them.

Without giving away the story in this review, I will say there were two aspects that I wish had been more developed, one was when Blake realized who Cole really was. It seemed to simple and easy for her to solve that and I felt she really went out on a dangerous limb by exposing what she found with such certainty with what little she had to work on. Second, I find it hard to really believe that with each new piece of the puzzle that they found to solve the mystery of what happen to them as children, they were willing to just take that information and sit on it for months. I think human nature would force a person to keep pushing and looking till they find what they were looking for. With that said, I do believe that with the authors background in psychology, she was able to pull it off in a way that we can believe. She makes sense of Blake’s fears and she makes fiction feel real. Just be prepared to scream for more at the end of this book.